


The Child of the Iris

by Melethh



Series: musical one-shots [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anastasia AU, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, One Shot, Padmé Amidala Lives, based on the song 'Still' from the broadway soundtrack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melethh/pseuds/Melethh
Summary: Darth Vader seeks to uncover the identity of the secret rebel leader known as "Iris" and when some intel informs him that Iris was searching for a child they lost and he decides to take advantage of this to complete his goal.However, he never could have predicted his search would lead him to his own lost child.





	The Child of the Iris

**Author's Note:**

> An addition to my musical one-shot series. This time focusing on Darth Vader and Luke with the song "Still" from the Broadway soundtrack of Anastasia. The song doesn't correlate as well as my previous one-shot did, but I thought it worked well with Vader's conflict in choosing to obey Palpatine or do what is best for Luke. 
> 
> This is set in an Anastasia AU where Padme lives and somehow Luke was separated from her and lost his memories of her and Leia. I might write more one-shots around this with Han and Lando as Dimitri and Vlad and Vader kinda taking on the role of Gleb, being the one to try and capture Luke like he would in a regular AU. I wanted Luke to be on Tatooine because it felt right, but he doesn't grow up with the Lars since in this AU he wouldn't end up there because of Obi-Wan. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one-shot!

_ “She’s nothing but a child _

_ A waif who needs protection _

[ _ I feel a strange connection _ ](https://genius.com/Stephen-flaherty-still-lyrics#note-14080779)

_ I can’t allow.” _

 

Strength comes from many sources. Sometimes it comes from ambition, anger, determination, and so very often it comes from a need to protect. 

 

Vader wasn’t blind to the fact that his need to protect led to Anakin Skywalker’s downfall. He wanted to protect Padme and their child so desperately that they were destroyed. Or at least, he was led to believe they were. 

 

Vader had been searching for the elusive secret leader and symbol of the rebel alliance known under the alias, Iris. His codebreakers had determined it was a connection to the royal crest of Naboo and that this mysterious leader was playing off the imagery of Naboo born Senator and Queen Padme Amidala as a contrast to Naboo born Emperor Sheev Palpatine. It enraged him that someone would use his late wife’s image to create their own cowardly identity. However, the further he got into the mystery the more secrets were revealed about lies fed to him as well as the galaxy. 

 

Iris had sent a secret message, claiming that they sought out the whereabouts of their lost son. They stated that for the child to meet with them they would have to pass many different channels of rebels. Vader had made it his business through his own planted “child of Iris” to learn what these channels were. Many seemed rather unimportant and some rather interesting due to the need for masks and voice modulators. His first spy had not even made it to the first meeting. Vader had sent a non-human and they reported they were dismissed before they could ever meet anyone. Vader sent a human next and they made it to two meetings. Now he knew that Iris was a human. 

 

Vader had been on Tatooine meeting with his current spy in a concealed room in Mos Eisley when he had heard a commotion from outside. The new spy had not arrived yet and he slightly opened the blinds to see a boy being beaten into the ground by two of Jabba’s minions. Vader determined the boy likely had been outspoken. Honestly, he didn’t care about the boy. He had better learn quickly that if he wanted to live that he should keep his mouth shut. 

  
  


Vader closed the blinds and forgot about the sandy-haired child. 

 

Then, his next visit to Mos Eisley was to investigate the rumors of a con being led for someone to pretend to Iris’s lost child. Whoever was running this secret knew who Iris was and Vader was prepared to find them and throttle the information out of them. They were fools to advertise this, but apparently smart enough to hide from Vader. That was the second time he saw the boy. He had been watching from a backroom when he saw a malfunction on a landspeeder the boy was working on caused a fire to catch. Instead of acting to put out the flames, the boy was with fear and Vader knew that if the boy did not move then he would be caught in the oncoming explosion once the fire reached the fuel. 

 

If the boy was foolish enough to allow himself to die then it wasn’t Vader’s business. However, the boy’s fear was echoing so loud in the Force it caused Vader to flinch. With a groan, he exited the room and walked quickly to where the boy sat, eyes glassy, paralyzed with fear. He wouldn’t let anyone see him sprint to rescue this tattered child. However, he did snatch him up by his collar and drag him away from the danger. He seemed to have broken him from a trance as the boy gave a loud cry of surprise and Vader threw him down once he was at a safe distance. When the landspeeder exploded, he froze once again and fell on his knees. He was shaking and clutching his arms against himself. 

 

Vader rolled his eyes behind the lens of his mask and moved to abandon the terrified, but living boy. He had done enough. However, he was stopped when the boy caught his cape in a shaking fist. Vader’s first instinct was to strike him for the disrespect, but his eyes gave him pause. He had not seen eyes like those since he dared look in a mirror. 

 

However, there was a light in them that he had never seen within himself. Power dwelled within them, but also startling goodness. He had not seen such telling eyes since Padme’s had stared back at him.

 

“Thank you…” The boy forced out. “I couldn’t move.” 

 

“Learn to move if you want to survive,” Vader replied coldly. He should take the boy. He had recognized powerful force potential. The inquisitors would turn the quivering child into a warrior of substance, but then that light in his eyes would surely burn out. Padme’s had burnt out at his own hands. Would she weep if she knew he tossed such an innocent child to the inquisitors?

 

No, she would not have wept. She would have yelled and fought until the child was free.

 

So Vader helped the boy to a shop where he was able to drink some tea and calm his nerves. The sight was comical. Darth Vader sitting across from a scrawny boy in tattered clothes as he sipped from the shaking cup in his hands. Vader learned the boy was an orphan of the Clone Wars named Luke, or that was what everyone assumed. The boy was found wandering about on his own at the age of twelve. Thankfully, Luke had wandered to the home of a woman who had taken in many orphans and not into the hand of slavers. Then, there was the boy’s aversion to the fire. He was nineteen and therefore, too young to remember the bloodshed of the Clone Wars, so then what was it in his lost memories that held him fast at the sight of fire. 

 

Luke had come to Mos Eisley to work for some extra money, but he said he was heading to the flight academy soon. Vader was very sympathetic to the boy. He knew what it was like to want to run from that dustball of a planet and never look back. 

 

Luke thanked him for the tea before running off. Vader tried to forget the boy again, but those eyes were burned into his mind. It wasn’t even just the look in his eyes. The shape of his face, the curve of his nose, and his hopeful smile. They all sang of her. It had to just be a trick of the force meant to taunt him. Vader met his spy, learned they had once again been refused from the meetings, and cursed as the trail on the con men went cold. He left Tatooine and found a new spy, but sent the bounty hunter, Boba Fett, the find out the identity of these con men. 

 

When Vader returned to Mos Eisley to meet his new spy, Luke was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he had gone to the flight academy. It wasn’t until he met with Boba Fett that he had his suspicions about Luke. 

 

Fett informed him that the men he was looking for were two humans named Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and a wookie named Chewbacca who were looking to collect the reward money for returning Iris's child. Well, they were seeking to train the child before running with their credits before Iris figured out they had been conned. He reported that they left with the short blonde boy who worked in Mos Eisley. He cursed thinking that Luke might have gotten swept up into something he didn’t even understand. 

 

Finding the Millenium Falcon had proved easier than expected. Once he knew he was looking for Han Solo then the trail had become rather easy to follow. He had pinned it down on Cymoon and he managed to corner Luke when he had been separated from Han and Lando after a nasty blaster wound to the shoulder. 

 

Once the door closed behind the boy, he had used to force to cut off the boy’s breath. His hands flew to his neck, but as they did a charm tumbled from his collar. A Japor snippet hung from his neck. The very same that he had given Padme all those years ago. 

 

Luke crumbled to the ground as Vader released his hold. He hauled him up against the doors and ripped it from his neck. Once Luke regained his breath, anger overcame his eyes as he tried to take it back. The nerve that he demands something that did not belong to him. This was supposed to be buried with Padme. 

“Where did you get this, boy?” Vader hissed. 

 

“Give it back!” Luke demanded, but Vader pushed him harder against the doors. Luke winced and cried out as Vader came close to crushing him. “Why do you care?” Luke forced out through clenched teeth. 

 

“None of your business, boy. Now answer me. Where did you get this?” Vader snapped, devoid of patience. Luke trembled under his gaze, but there was still that power that lived within his eyes. His fear was practically crying out to the force, but strength coincided. This was a boy who was willing to stare down his fear and somehow spit on the dark side’s allure. 

 

“It belonged to my  _ mother _ .” 

 

Vader’s chance of preventing Luke’s escape was lost in his shock. He remained there, releasing his hold with surprising gentleness, and leaving the hand to hang in the air for a moment as the pieces began to come together. The boy slipped past Vader, but the dark lord could not bring himself to turn and stop him. If Vader was right then he knew who Luke was seeking. He knew who Iris was. 

 

Whether or not Luke indeed was their son, if the boy thought the necklace belonged to his mother and he sought out Iris then Vader knew who it was behind the name. 

 

_ “It seems in your anger you killed her.” _

 

Lies. It was all a lie. Padme Amidala had not died that day. Instead, she allowed herself to become a martyr while leading a rebellion in the guise of a ghost. It was the cunning he knew she was capable of. 

 

She sought out a child and that meant somewhere out there Vader’s child lived. It could be Luke. He certainly had the force potential. Luke even looked like him and yet Padme lived in his expressions and demeanor. However, it was just as likely that Han Solo and Lando Calrissian knew what to look for regarding appearance and groomed Luke to play at being Padme Amidala’s son.  Someone as desperate for familial ties as Luke would undoubtedly allow for the manipulation to take place willingly. 

 

Vader glanced down at his glove. There was blood dripping from it where a blaster wound from Luke had bled onto him. That was one way to find out. 

 

As irony would have it, Vader’s DNA test results revealed that it had indeed been his son that he pulled to safety from the blast in Mos Eisley. He was right when he recognized Padme in the boy. He was right when he recognized himself. 

 

He didn’t know whether or not he wanted to weep with joy or break everything in the lab.

 

He had come to terms with his grief long ago. He accepted that Padme Amidala had died along with his child and focused all of his anger into helping Palpatine build his empire on the backs of corpses. However, he did remember how happy he was when Padme told him the news. It was the last time he remembered experiencing true happiness. He could see all the fantasies they spoke of unbothered by their tragic fate. Anakin cradling a son in his arms for the first time. Padme kissing the forehead of her baby. Luke riding on Anakin’s shoulders as he presented the galaxy to him. Vader could still gift the galaxy to his son. His son could rule the empire.

 

Vader knew his mind said to find the boy, train him, and together they would destroy the emperor. Still, Padme lived and she would never concede to this. She wanted her son back just as badly as Vader did. Was there hope for the family he once thought he would have? No, he was far beyond such redemption, much less such reward. 

 

He had long dreamt of usurping his master, but his desire was torn between selfish revenge for his lies and a need to protect Padme and his son. Perhaps the best thing to do was to find them and hide them, but she would never allow this to happen quietly. Neither would Luke if Padme’s courage truly lived in those eyes. 

 

He knew what his duty told him, but his heart was in conflict. He had to make a choice and the pragmatic one was capturing Luke, training him in the dark side, and then dethrone Palpatine so he may possess the power to protect Padme. 

 

But still, did he have the strength to extinguish Luke’s light? Especially when it burned with the same intensity as her own. 

  
  


_ “ _ [ _ She trembles like a flower _ ](https://genius.com/Stephen-flaherty-still-lyrics#note-14886032)

_ But in her there’s a  _ **_power_ **

_ I see that now _

_ I am nothing but a man _

_ With nothing but his orders to fulfill..” _

 

**Author's Note:**

> that was an interesting ride. I hope the Anastasia AU elements didn't make things too confusing, but I tried my best :,) leave a comment or a kudo if you want to bc feedback is what keeps me going.


End file.
